Retailers, postal services embrace lockers as delivery alternative

Will Palley, 20 May 2013

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Walmart will start rolling out delivery lockers in its U.S. stores, allowing customers to pick up goods ordered online.

Recently, Walmart announced it will start rolling out delivery lockers in its U.S. stores, allowing customers to pick up goods ordered online. The retailer is following in the footsteps of Amazon and a range of others, aiming to knock down any consumer barriers to e-commerce and avoid the costs associated with missed deliveries. In the U.K., for instance, failed first-time, on-time deliveries cost the e-commerce sector an estimated £851 million a year, according to an October report by IMRG. And two-fifths of British shoppers have stopped purchasing from a website after a problematic delivery, per the industry association Interactive Media Group.

Amazon started testing its locker service in late 2011, with customers in certain cities able to pick up items from locker sites such as 7-Eleven stores, chain drugstores and Staples outlets. BufferBox, a Canadian startup acquired by Google last November, allows subscribers to have packages sent to lockers in locations around Toronto at no fee. Delivery lockers are being used for groceries, too. In January, Finnish postal service Itella launched a pilot click-and-collect scheme with retail co-operative HOK-Elanto: Shoppers pick up their groceries from refrigerated lockers.

Other postal services have also adopted lockers over the past few years, allowing customers to collect deliveries at their convenience around town. Postal services across Europe and Asia—including those in Germany, France, Turkey, Lithuania, Estonia and Singapore—have installed electronically operated lockers in public places. Cleveron, with locations in Estonia, Finland, Russia and Ukraine, simplifies the sending process as well, allowing users to drop off packages and pay with a credit card.

Increasingly, ecommerce is delivering goods whenever and wherever shoppers need them, whether on the same day they’re ordered or at the location that works best for the consumer.